Meta-Ethical Theories (Naturalism, Intuitionism, Emotivism)

• The problem, identified by Hume, among others, finding any logical justification of ethical judgements
• We cannot derive what we ought to do from a statement of the facts of the case
• You cannot go from an 'is' (statement of fact) to an 'ought' (a moral)
• E.G. Poison: something that in nature can cause evil but is not inherently evil. To cause evil, it takes humans to cause harm to someone else by using it. You cannot say that poison is evil

REALIST THEORY - There are moral facts in the same way that there are scientific facts

• Ethical naturalism states that moral principles are knowable from nature
• E.g the word good describes a natural quality (found in nature and is physical), such as pleasure, thus overcoming the gap between nature and ethics
• Utilitarianism can be seen as a naturalistic theory; pleasure and pain can be observed and experienced as a posteriori truth (Jeremy Bentham created the Hedonic Calculus in order to help people decide how much pleasure and pain they will get from an action)

G.E. Moore objected to this, calling it the Naturalistic Fallacy; the alleged error of assuming that good is some natural quality, such as pleasure.

Moore created the Open Question Argument; the view that we can say that something has a natural quality, such as pleasure, yet we can still significantly ask whether that something is good.

‘X is pleasant, but is it good?

For a sadist, inflicting pain is pleasant, but is it good?’

REALIST THEORY

• Thinkers such as W.D. Ross and H.A. Prichard determined that good is something that we can know with great certainty
• E.g Colour; we know what the colour is, such as yellow. There is no one thing that is yellow, but when we perceive it we know it
• G.E. Moore argued for the recognising of good as intuitionism - the good is there and our minds can recognise it as non-natural qualities

Two or more people may have very different ethical views, so how can we decide which one is right?

And if we know what 'the good' is simply by the process of intuition, how can we properly discuss our view?

ANTI-REALIST THEORY - there are no moral facts

• Emotivism is the theory that ethical statements only express emotions and are meaningless - they are not facts just reactions
• Emotivists stress that ethical statements cannot be converted into statements that could be empirically tested and thus fail the verifiability criterion of meaning and so are meaningless
• The principal supporters of emotivism are A.J. Ayer and Logical Positivists who believed that all statements are meaningless unless they can be verified or falsified
• Winston Barnes stated that the language used for ethical discussion cannot be said to be meaningful e.g. right, wrong (Killing-Boo Theory: if someone shouts "boo!" because they do not like something, they are offering nothing to discuss)

James Rachels argued that moral judgements appeal to reasoning not just expressions of feelings ("I don't like the colour orange" is different to saying "I don't agree with abortion")

MORAL ANTI-REALISM

• J.L. Mackie presented the anti-moral realist view in two ways
• The Argument from Relativity - morality develops in different cultures so right and wrong are only relative to the culture you live in (example: monogamy)
• The Argument from Queerness - Mackie states that "if there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe."
• Mackie objects to objective categorical imperatives and says if they exist they would be so queer and weird compared to everything else in the universe

ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS

• The ethical demand grows out of human encounter
• It is in encounter that we experience the emotions of love, liking, need, desires, hopes and demands (things that make us face the need to be moral)

"In each of his actions, the human person is eyewitness of the transition from the 'is' to the 'should' - the transition from 'x is truly good' to 'I should do x'."

 ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS

• Suggests his Principle of Generic Consistency
• Based on the idea that humans are not self-sufficient
• We have needs, which can only be met with the help of other people, so we make demands upon them, to provide food, education etc.
• But there is a need for some return; we need to do things for them if we are to receive the things we need
• If we treat people badly, they will feel the little requirement to do things for us
• Mutual dependencies create a world of contracts, duties, obligations and a world of rights
• Being moral is a reality of living, not a logical question